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ANALYSIS: WITH BASE PAY 286 MADE $100,000 IN '03
SACRAMENTO - It's not just correctional officers who are receiving overtime-fueled six-figure salaries to guard hardened criminals in California's prisons or oversee inmate fire crews: Their immediate supervisors are also drawing paychecks in excess of $100,000.
Altogether, in 2003, the salaries of 286 sergeants and lieutenants topped that threshold. On average, they received $42,427 in overtime, or 38 percent of their total pay, according to a Mercury News analysis of data from the state Controller's Office.
Lt. Conception O. Gonzalez at the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad, earned the most overtime, $116,589. His overall pay was $197,000 -- $74,000 more than the director of the corrections department.
Gonzalez declined to comment but was described by a colleague as a workhorse. ``We can call him at home and he'll come in,'' said Lt. Javier Aboytes, an information officer for the prison, which is home to about 7,000 medium-security inmates. ``He's bailed out a lot of us.''
Aboytes noted that the prison had six or seven vacancies for lieutenants and Gonzalez is one of the most experienced lieutenants. ``He knows how to work every position in this prison,'' Aboytes said.
A year earlier, Gonzalez was also the highest paid lieutenant or sergeant in the Department of Corrections, with gross pay of $160,000, according to the controller's records, obtained from the office of Sen. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo. His exact number of overtime hours was not immediately available.
Wendy Still, the department's chief financial officer, said both the California Training Facility and adjacent Salinas Valley State Prison have trouble recruiting supervisors partly because of rising home prices. ``The cost of living is just incredible,'' she said.
With lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wrestling with how to trim state spending, prison costs increasingly are under scrutiny.
Speier has scheduled a Thursday hearing to look at the state's labor contract with the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, which represents rank and file officers but not sergeants and lieutenants.
Last week, the Mercury News reported that 391 officers earned more than $100,000 in 2003. The average overtime for these officers, mostly guards, was $44,700.
The department is currently spending about $5.7 billion a year to house, clothe, feed and watch 161,000 inmates. It is the nation's largest prison system, rapidly expanding in the 1980s and 1990s as the public wanted to crack down on crime. Overall overtime costs last year fell to $178 million from $204 million in 2002, according to the department.
The number of lieutenants and sergeants is relatively small. Last year, there were about 3,400 compared with more than 20,000 guards, counselors and nurses. Sergeants and lieutenants do not work under union-negotiated work rules, according to Lance Corcoran, executive vice president of the correctional officers union.
While some prisons may seek to limit overtime, Corcoran said, ``there's no cap on the amount of overtime a lieutenant or sergeant can work.''
Five of the 10 lieutenants and sergeants with the most overtime pay work at the California Correctional Center. Lt. John Appel, a prison information officer, said the five supervisors help oversee rural fire camps where inmate fire crews are stationed. The overtime ``is from responding to fire emergencies. And 2003 was a big year for fires,'' he said.
Based on a Mercury News analysis of the figures, it appears that sergeants and lieutenants are making a greater portion of their pay from overtime than other prison workers. Since 2000, average overtime pay for sergeants and lieutenants has hovered around 20 to 21 percent of their average base pay, while it has dropped for the rank and file from 10 to 8 percent.
There wasn't much difference in the growth rates of base pay. But average overtime pay for sergeants and lieutenants has increased 10 percent, while it's dropped 5 percent for the officers during the same period.
Still, the department's finance officer has estimated that nearly half of recent overtime for all officers is due to sick leave. Also, she said, guards and their supervisors are taking advantage of expanded employee rights to utilize family leave. And she said they are using programs that promote preventive health care.
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